Connected on 2013-09-12 11:30:00
from Lee, Florida, United States
- 10:23 am
- Bugscope Teamstill coating the sample...
- 10:38 am
- Guestare those a group of bugs
- Bugscope Teamyes they are!
- Bugscope Teamwe're waiting for the vacuum to get better
- Bugscope Teamso we can turn the beam on
- GuestI see a fly what other bugs are there?
- Bugscope Teamwe have two leafhoppers, which are super cool, and some moths, and a true bug
- Bugscope TeamCate says the rest is a surprise
- Bugscope TeamVacuum is almost ready
- Guestwhat is a true bug?
- 10:43 am
- Bugscope Teamthis is the CCD view of the inside of the chamber -- it's an infrared image
- Bugscope Teamtrue bugs used to be called Hemiptera -- I'm not sure that is true now
- Bugscope Teamhemi- means 'half' and ptera is wing
- Bugscope Teamtheir wings are kind of half covered by the elytra
- Bugscope Teamthey all have piercing/sucking mouthparts
- Bugscope Teamactually leafhoppers are also true bugs, as are cicadas
- Bugscope TeamCate is running the 'scope and making adjustments, tuning it up, also finding the presets
- Bugscope TeamI'm on an adjacent computer talking with you and getting ready to save presets
- 10:48 am
- Guestwhats that curly thing?
- Bugscope Teamthe curly thing we bypassed was the proboscis
- Bugscope Teamlike all coiled up?
- Guestok
- Bugscope Teamthey force hemolymph into them to make them extend, like a party favor
- Guestohhh
- Bugscope Teamhoneybee eye
- Guestcool
- 10:54 am
- Guestwhats that?
- Bugscope Teamthis is a pollen grain
- Guestoh
- Bugscope Teambusted open pollen grain
- Bugscope Teamdon't see a stinger yet
- Bugscope Teambees have branched setae; no other insect is said to have them
- 10:59 am
- Guestwhats branched setae ?
- Bugscope Teamsetae are the tiny hairs insects and other arthropods have that help them sense the environment -- they function as touch and wind receptors, thermal sensors, chemoreceptors...
- Bugscope Teamthey also help hold things
- Guestthats cool
- Bugscope Teamthe setae that help hold onto things are called tenent setae, and they are often on a pad called a pulvillus that is near the end of the legs
- Bugscope Teamthis is a mite on the ladybug abdomen
- Bugscope Teamanother mite
- 11:04 am
- Bugscope Teamwe've never seen mites on a ladybug that I remember
- Bugscope Teamawesome
- Guestyea it is
- Guestam i the only one on here?
- Bugscope Teamyes you are. until just now
- Bugscope TeamHi Kelly!
- Bugscope TeamWelcome to Bugscope!
- TeacherHi guys!
- Bugscope Teamthis one is covered with mites
- Bugscope Teamwow
- TeacherThat's awesome, my students will be over (we're bringing them over to a big conference room) in about 10 minutes
- Bugscope Teamwe're going to keep control of the 'scope now, until we get all of the presets done
- Bugscope Teamsuper cool Kelly!
- TeacherCan I make this appear full screen on our view?
- Bugscope TeamCate is making the presets and will be on when she's done
- Teacherfantastic, thanks!
- Bugscope TeamKelly you can expand the browseer to full screen but not the viewing box unless you change the screen resolution
- Bugscope Teambrowser, sp.
- 11:10 am
- Teacherit actually looks great, we've got it up on three giant projectors
- Bugscope Teamthis is some kind of borer but it's mouth is all covered with juju
- Bugscope Teamthis is a Cerambycid beetle
- Bugscope Teamant biting leg of Cerambycid
- Bugscope Teamtiny green true bug
- Bugscope Teamcaterpillar
- 11:16 am
- Bugscope Teamso this is actually a small stinkbug
- Guestwhat are those
- Bugscope Teamhere are some claws on a beetle
- Bugscope Teamthe things coming down from the head like golf clubs are antennae
- Guestwhat were those cube looking things?
Bugscope Teamthose were salt crystals from wendy's restaurant
- 11:21 am
- Bugscope Teamkelly we are done with presets if you want to drive around the sample
- Guestlol ok
- Teacherok, just getting everyone settled in here...
- Bugscope Teamnormal salt looks like boring cubes
- Bugscope Teamwe are ready to roll
- Bugscope TeamCate'll be on in an minute.
- Bugscope TeamKelly please try one of the presets to ensure that we gave you control again.
- TeacherOkay...
- TeacherLooks like I do!
- Bugscope Teamsuper cool
- Bugscope Teamthat'll all we needed
- Bugscope Teamduh that's all we needed
- 11:27 am
- Bugscope TeamWendy's doesn't use this kind of salt anymore.
- Bugscope Teamso what you can do is drive anywhere you want, and ask questions about anything you want
- Bugscope Teamyou could have students log in as well, if there are other computers, and ask questions
- TeacherStudents are all in front of me...I'll be typing their questions
- TeacherRolando wants to know what kind of salt we're looking at
Bugscope Teamthis is salt from the fast food restaurant Wendy's. It has an anticaking agent in it that makes it look like it has smaller crystals within it
- Bugscope Teamawesome
- Bugscope Teamyou're driving a $600,000 scanning electron microscope from your school
- TeacherAm I able to select one of the images on the right to explore (Darth Vader)
Bugscope Teamyes!
- Bugscope Teamyou should be able to just click on it, and the 'scope will drive to that place on the stub
- TeacherThanks
- TeacherCan you tell us what we're looking at...
- Bugscope Teamthis is a beetle
- 11:32 am
- Bugscope Teamyou can see it has its forelegs crossed
- Bugscope Teamyou can see its compound eye, one of them
- Bugscope Teamits antennae are both pointed down, and they have clubbed ends that are hard to see
- Bugscope Teamwe can see that it is likely shiny, with those fine setae reflecting the light back to the viewer at the macro level
- Bugscope Teamsee the ommatidia?
- TeacherChristian is wondering if there is a significance to "Darth Vader"
Bugscope TeamI thought it looked kind of recalcitrant, kind of like Darth Vader
- Bugscope Teamthe compound eye has lots of tiny often hexagonal facets that function as lenses
- TeacherMac wants to know what is sticking out of the eye
Bugscope Teamthose are setae that help it sense when something might be touching the eye
- Bugscope Teamsome bugs also don't see some colors while they see others we can't see- like ultraviolet
- Bugscope Teamcompound eyes help insects see more of what is around them at one time -- they give them better peripheral vision
- Teacher(Evan) can we tell if its male or female?
Bugscope Teamoften with beetles it is hard to tell
- 11:37 am
- TeacherDoes the beetle see clear images with it's compound eyes?
Bugscope Teamthey don't see things like we do. They see broken up pieces of images that their brain has put back together
Bugscope Teamimagine seeing an image with a low pixel count
- Bugscope Teamso I don't believe we can tell on this beetle
- Bugscope Teaman advantage of compound eyes, besides good peripheral vision, is that they provide very quick updates of the visual field, so insects can see when something is coming toward them
- Bugscope Teaminsects have six legs, a head, thorax, and abdomen, and two antennae
- Bugscope Teamat the tips of the legs are jointed segments called tarsi, and at the end of the tarsi we often find claws, like we do here
- Bugscope Teaminsects do not have skin, like we do, with nerve endings embedded in it
- Teacherwhat was the actual size of this beetle
Bugscope Teamlooks like it is about 10 or 11 mm long
- 11:42 am
- TeacherLogan would like to know how big the microscope is
Bugscope Teamthe microscope is kind of like a large long desk, and at one end there is a column about 5 feet high
- Bugscope Teamand they do not have noses
Bugscope Teaminstead they use their antennae for olfactory senses
- Bugscope Teamthere are usually two spiracles on each segment, on the sides
Bugscope Teamthese openings on the side lets air into the trachea, a series of tubes that brings oxygen to the rest of the body
- TeacherJoe want to know how long you've had the microscope
Bugscope Teamwe've had the microscope since the beginning of 1999!
- 11:47 am
- Bugscope Teamthe exoskeleton is kind of like a coat of armor. a shrimp shell is its exoskeleton
- TeacherMac wants to know what type of beetle
Bugscope Teami'm not sure. it looks kind of like a cucumber beetle
Bugscope TeamMy guess is a bark beetle of sorts just looking at the head and the clubbed antennae
Bugscope Teamthis is most likely not a bark beetle, i retract my statement
- TeacherTrying to change to the next insect and not getting a result
Bugscope Teamwhich one? sometimes the presets stop working
- TeacherWas just going to go the next (titles are a little cutoff)
- Bugscope TeamI crashed the server...
- Teachersuper small true bug
- TeacherThere is a round of applause from 100 students for you scot
- Bugscope Teamshould be back now
- Teacheryes sir
- Guestyou said bugs dont have skin.. why
Bugscope Teamthey have an exoskeleton instead. This protects their bodies.
Bugscope Teamthis exoseleton both protects them and prevents them from sensing their environments like we do, which is insects have lots of setae (the hairs), different types of hairs help them with different senses
- Bugscope Teamthis would be a better time for applause
- 11:53 am
- TeacherLooks like it's lost some parts!
Bugscope Teamyes it's definitely righthanded now
- Bugscope Teamthe background is carbon tape with a little bit of silver paint on it to help the insects stick to the tape
- TeacherCan you tell us about what we're looking at now?
Bugscope Teamthis is a small true bug, with piercing/sucking mouthparts adapted for penetrating leaves or stems of plants, or the bodies of fruit
Bugscope Teamthis piercing sucking mouthpart has also been adapted for other things, bedbugs for example suck on our blood, and assassin bugs use their beak to suck the juices out from other insects
- Guestwhat is all over the bugs eye
Bugscope Teamthere's some juju, like unidentified dried fluid, and there are some scales from a moth or butterfly, perhaps, and there may also be some mold spores
- 11:58 am
- Bugscope Teamthe proboscis is a long tube with cutting components on the inside
- Bugscope Teamthe scales we see on the abdomen are not from the bug itself but from another insect that has scales -- a moth, butterfly, mosquito, or sliverfish, for example
- Bugscope Teamwe can see one of the spiracles now
- Bugscope Teamsome of the small hairs, called microsetae, do not have any sensory function
- TeacherDo their hairs function the same as ours...do they have the small muscles to make the hairs stand on end?
Bugscope Teamtheir hairs are somewhat similar. They can have many functions besides temperature regulation. They also provide a sense of touch, or they can be more chemical in purpose by providing a sense of smell or taste
- Bugscope Teamthis is one of the spiracles
- 12:03 pm
- Guestwhat is that a hole? and why?
Bugscope Teamthat is a spiracle, what insects breathe through
- Bugscope Teamyou can see some dried fluid at the entryway
- Bugscope Teamsee the micron bar to the lower left of the screen?
- Bugscope Teambacteria are generally about 2 microns, or micrometers, long
- Bugscope Teama micrometer is a thousandth of a millimeter and thus a millionth of a meter
- Bugscope Teamnow you can see that an ant had attached itself to the beetle's leg with its mandibles
- 12:08 pm
- Bugscope Teamwe can see some web as well
- Bugscope Teamsome fungal hyphae...
- Guestit was biting the bug
Bugscope Teamyes it was!
- Bugscope TeamHi Jill! Hi Girl!
- Bugscope TeamKelly are you still there?
- Teacherwe are
- Bugscope Teamsuper cool
- Bugscope Team(this is Scot, now in my office)
- Bugscope Teamthis is a small green true bug
- Bugscope Teamwe do not see color with the electron microscope because we are using electrons rather than light to collect these images
- Guest*think
- Bugscope Teamthe specimens are are on a stub in the vacuum chamber, and we are beaming a fine stream of electrons at them
- 12:14 pm
- GuestHi! Kid's are fascinated
- Guestdo you the beetle was alive or dead when the ant was biting it
Bugscope Teamnot sure but I think maybe it was alive; when the beetle died its limbs moved into and dried in that position
- TeacherAre we able to see the mites? Seem to have lost the presets again...
Bugscope Teamnow we see the mites on the female earwig at low mag
- Bugscope Teamhere is one of the mites
- Bugscope Teamwe can see its head, which is very small
- Bugscope Teamthat is a great analogy
- Bugscope Teamwe are not sure if they feed on hemolymph that squeezes through the joints on the body, or if they eat food debris or something else
- Bugscope Teamthere are different kinds of mites, but these we see most often
- Bugscope Teamand sometimes they're just simply hitching a ride
- Bugscope Teamthey hang out in places in which they cannot easily be brushed off
- TeacherChristian would like to know how difficult the SEM is to maintain?
Bugscope Teamwe have to know when we can fix something and when we have to call for service; we pay $36,000 per year for someone to be on call in case it breaks
- 12:19 pm
- TeacherEdwin would like to know how far we can zoom in?
Bugscope Teamlet's go to the other mite and see how high we can go
- TeacherJon would like to know how long it takes to prepare the specimens?
Bugscope Teammaybe half an hour to pick out the insects and stick them onto the sample disk. Then we coat them with a thin coat of metal to make them conductive
- Bugscope Teamoops...
- TeacherJoe would like to know some of the things that can go wrong while viewing a sample?
Bugscope Teamsome things, even with a metal coating, can be less conductive than other things. This causes imaging problems where we see streaks or bright spots
- Guestcool!
- Bugscope Teamthat is 65,000 on a mold spore
- Bugscope Teamthat is 153,000x
- Bugscope Teamwe're on the nanoscale, on a moth's ommatidium
- Bugscope Teamif we were closer to the sample we could do better
- TeacherAlfonso would like to know the largest organism you've viewed
Bugscope Teamwe can only look at things that are fairly small
- 12:24 pm
- Bugscope Teamso a cicada is like looking at an aircraft carrier
- TeacherJasmyn would like to know if the SEM you have is still advanced since you've had it since 1999?
Bugscope Teamthey are easier to use now but do not have much better resolution (ultimate imaging ability)
- TeacherMaria would like to know the weirdest thing you've seen?
Bugscope Teamone thing that is pretty awesome is this really cool kind of pollen that looks totally unreal
- Guestwhats that?
Bugscope Teamthis is a close-up of one of the moth's scales
- TeacherJoe would like to know how often you use to the SEM to view samples?
Bugscope Teamit gets used about every day, even on weekends
- TeacherMy students are going to be heading back...thank you so much for your time and allowing us access/control of the scope!
- Bugscope TeamKelly Thank You, and Thank You to the Kids!
- Bugscope TeamThanks!
- Bugscope TeamRainy I gave you control.
- Guestthank you
- 12:30 pm
- Guestwhat is this
- Bugscope Teamnot often that you get to see a flying spaghetti monster baby.
- Bugscope Teamwe think it is a kind of plant but we are not sure
- Bugscope Teamthis is the moth's head
- Bugscope Teamthe coiled part is the proboscis
- Bugscope Teamstored for flying
- Bugscope Teamit is like a straw, but it cab be opened from the side, as we see in the foreground
- Bugscope Teamnot really the foreground, but angling
- Guestso the spaghetti monster was on a bee tongue?
Bugscope Teamyes it was!
- Bugscope Teamthe multitude of scales we find on butterflies and moths and silverfish and mosquitoes help protect them from spiderwebs
- 12:35 pm
- Bugscope Teamscales come off easily and can thus be left behind if the insect flies into a web
- Bugscope Teamthese are chemoreceptors on the inner portion of a ladybug palp
- Bugscope Teamit looks like a vacuum cleaner nozzle
- Guestwhat does chemoreceptors mean
- Bugscope Teamthe chemoreceptors are kind of like tastebuds
- Bugscope Teamthey help the ladybug taste the air, or actually smell the air - sense chemicals in the air
- Bugscope Teamyou can see why we did not make a preset of the ladybug's head -- it is covered with mold
- Guestwhy
- Bugscope Teamwe almost always mount insects upside down
- Bugscope Teamthe mold would not look so good
- Bugscope Teamyou can see a mite to the lower right
- Guestwhy does it have mold
Bugscope Teamoh that is what happens eventually to everything -- mold will get on it and it will rot. unless it was kept super dry
- 12:40 pm
- Bugscope TeamJill would you like to drive?
- Guestsure!
Bugscope Teamokay I just gave you control of the 'scope
- Bugscope Teamyou can click on any of the presets, to the left, to get the 'scope to drive to that place, or you can do what you're doing now, and drive around the sample, change the mag, etc.
- Bugscope Teamwe found by looking up close on this true bug that it has a stink defense like the larger stinkbugs
- Bugscope Teamthat is what th absorbent area was, around the duct where the stink gland is
- Bugscope Teamthanks for visiting us today!
- GuestThank you, this was fun. and I learned alot. I am going to send in my own bug too look at.
Bugscope Teamsuper cool
Bugscope TeamThank you, Rainy!
- 12:45 pm
- GuestIs this a "knee"
- Bugscope Teamlooks like it
- Bugscope Teamyou can see both setae and microsetae here
- Bugscope Teamthis is cool
- Bugscope Teamthe head is the tiny part just below where we are now
- 12:50 pm
- Bugscope Teamthat is the head, mid left
- Bugscope Teamnot remarkable
- Bugscope TeamI'm sitting next to the microscope, so I can tweak the fine focus.
- Guestthis with the 2 tentacles?
Bugscope Teamyes!
- Bugscope Teamwe've seen mites with eyes before, but they are on the carapace.
- Bugscope Teamlike, on plant mites
- GuestThanks SO much, Scot. Natives getting restless here
- Bugscope TeamI think they're all arachnids
- Guestwe'll check back again
Bugscope TeamSuper Cool. Thank you for getting on today!
- Bugscope Teamhaha g'luck with the little savages
- Bugscope TeamGirl are you still here?
- Bugscope Teammaybe time to shut down...
- Bugscope TeamThank you!
- Bugscope TeamBye!
